NI 522 - November, 2019

China in charge

A note from the editor

Fear of a red planet

It’s 1860 and the ‘century of humiliation’ is underway: China is forced to open up to the opium trade and Hong Kong has been handed over to London. British troops slaughter thousands and burn the emperor’s Old Summer Palace to the ground.

Today it’s Britain that goes to Beijing cap in hand. A Chinese firm is putting almost £2 billion ($2.4 bn) into redeveloping London’s Royal Albert Dock, from where imperial ships once set off, and partly financing the UK’s largest infrastructure project, a nuclear power plant in Somerset. George Osborne, former chancellor, put it bluntly: ‘China is what it is. And we have to either be [there] or be nowhere.’

The average Briton is likely unaware of this historical reversal. The average Chinese person is very much aware. As a factory worker in Guangdong told the journalist Alec Ash, who collected vox-pops for this issue: ‘I hope [China] will become even stronger, so that in the future no-one will bully us, like your country did a hundred years ago.’ But what is China really planning for the 21st century?

We have sought to answer this judiciously. There are more than enough ‘red scare’ stories in the Western press that treat this nation of over one billion people as a monolith. But nor should the prospect of a nationalistic superpower with a powerful betrayal narrative fill internationalists with much hope.

Elsewhere, there is a moving cartoon history of the final days of Sri Lanka’s civil war and, in the Long Read, gay women from Equatorial Guinea vividly and unflinchingly tell Trifonia Melibea Obono their experiences of forced motherhood and ‘family values’.

Yohann Koshy for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org

The big story

Since the 2008 economic crisis, China has invested heavily in infrastructure. The largest radio telescope in the world, for observing outer space, was completed in 2016 in southwest China.

Photo: Liu Xu/Xinhua/Alamy

NI 522 - November, 2019

China in charge

A note from the editor

Fear of a red planet

The big story

From a poor agricultural nation to the second-largest economy in the world: the rapid rise of China is one of the most remarkable facts of this era, as Yohann Koshy finds out. But how did it happen? And what comes next?

The Big Story

Campaigning and more reading on China.

Ma Tianjie examines the limits of China’s ‘ecological nationalism’.

Where’s the money going?; More money, more problems; Climate breakdown; In focus.

Since 2016, at least a million people have been sent to re-education camps as part of the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghur people. Yohann Koshy speaks to anthropologist Darren Byler to find out what is going on in China’s northwest province.

China is Africa’s largest trading partner and has become deeply involved with the continent’s politics in recent years. This has not been without its controversies. Christine Mungai reflects on the past, present and future of the relationship between these two powerhouses.

Amy Hawkins surveys the cultural landscape in the world’s second-largest economy.

Insecure people can be highly susceptible to false narratives purporting to explain their precarious situation​, argues Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Under a tree in the studios of Bangladesh’s struggling film industry, women extras in the shadows of glamour wait for work. They tell Sophie Hemery and Alice McCool their stories.

With a year to go until Myanmar’s next general election, political activism is being pushed to the periphery. Charlotte England reports.

In a groundbreaking new work, Trifonia Melibea Obono has sought out and recorded the unheard stories of lesbian and bisexual women living in the small West African state of Equatorial Guinea.

Opinion

After Mugabe by Nanjala Nyabola.

Suicidal drives and fake patriotism by Leonardo Sakamoto.

We need to talk about toilets. By Nilanjana Bhowmick.

Currents

Violence in Rio de Janeiro. Report from Brazil by Beatriz Miranda.

Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change.

Report from Spain by Eoin Wilson.

Report from the UK by Husna Risvi.

Report from Cambodia by Daniel Quinlan.

Report from Western Sahara by Chris Brazier.

Report from Australia by Nick Rodway.

Ride and joy; Green hope; Truth to power.

Regulars

Praise, blame and all points in between? Give us your feedback.

Parsa Sanjana Sajid visits a popular shrine and witnesses the everyday mingling of the social and the spiritual.

Deforestation is not a hair cut.

Over the rainbow

Gateskeepers

Electric Life by Gatis Sluka (Riga, Latvia).

The facts, figures and politics of Tonga.

The Sri Lankan war of 2009 marked the termination of a long and bitter fight for autonomy for the island’s Tamil community. Benjamin Dix and Lindsay Pollock tell the story of Vanni, the Tamil region on the island’s north.

What’s happening to human numbers – and what should happen – is a hot topic again. Mohan Rao and Sara Parkin go head to head.

Fight climate change by P J Polyp.

Six things you can do to protect the Amazon by Danny Chivers.

Bashar al-Assad’s regime has laid out a blueprint for the reconstruction of Syria. But this rebuilding works towards a social-cleansing agenda, say Syrian architects and urban planners Hani Fakhani and Abou Zainedin. They spoke with Alessio Perrone.

Highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.

Cartoon by Kate Evans.

Richard Swift on the notorious Emirati ruler, MBZ.

Cartoon on Trump by Marc Roberts.

Should I call the cops if I witness a theft? Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective.

Vanessa Baird on how to turn a toxic bane into a liberating blessing.

Film, Book & Music Reviews

Sophia; A People’s History of Heaven; Nudibranch; Guest House for Young Widows.

Sorry We Missed You; The Report.

O Céu é Velho há Muito Tempo; Bantou Mentale.

Louise Gray speaks to Peter Cusack about a sensory project bringing a new dimension to environmental storytelling.

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Insecure people can be highly susceptible to false narratives purporting to explain their precarious situation, argues Helena Norberg-Hodge.